Im taking delivery of a lovely new Canyon hardtail later this week, which leaves my Anthem 26er as kind of redundent for what I use it for, ie non technical longish rides and the odd race.

Anyhow I’ve been thinking of selling it, but looking at the 2nd hand market it looks like its worth buttons, so thinking of whether I could perhaps turn it into a little trail ripper to plug the gap between my Spexh Enduro and the hardtail..basically turning it into something a bit more like a trance than an anthem.

Obviously I could just buy a trance, but given I’m reluctant to spend any real money, my thoughts are a longer fork (120 or 140 – thinking the former), and angleset to take 2 degrees of the headangle, and some offset pushing to drop the BB and further slacken it off.

The outcome would leave me with a slackish (68 degree) trail bike with 140mm up front, whilst keeping the lovely 100mm of giant suspension at the back. Sounds perfect in theory….

Or will it be a terrible idea, will ride like a dog, and the head tube will snap off at the first sign of a drop?

Does an angleset even fit an anthem?

120mm forks are a popular choice for Anthems. I have them in mine. Not sure about 140s.

lots of people used to do a similar to the old 2006-08 100mm trance – mine had 120mm forks and offset bushings and was a great bike. 140mm raised the bb too much and didn’t feel as right.

Try it, it’ll be a fun bike I’d imagine.

Old old anthems – with 3.5cm shock in different position are best at 100mm.
But the newer 4cm version are fantastic at 120mm. I have had 3 anthems and they were all great “trail bikes” way tougher than they should be. But 140mm is a no no in my book.

thanks for the responses folks…any ideas if you can fit an angleset?

Mine is 5 years old and the integrated headset won’t take an angleset afaik.

I’ve got 120mm sid rct3’s on mine.. arch ex rims..
it’s had a fair bashing in the quantock hills and north downs, it’s not broke yet.

any idea what headset it takes? Mine is a 2011 version with a taperred tube. Cant measure it without stripping the bike down Looks to be semi integrated. An hour of googling tells me nothing!

That generation might have been 44mm headubes with some kind of zero stack cups in them. It that’s it, you could go -2 degrees with external cuppage.

I’ll be watching this thread as I bought a NOS 26″ 2013 Anthem the other week,the idea being to use it for XC & light use at trailcentres.(I’ve a 2005 Enduro for going daft on) & I’m thinking of stripping the forks to see if there’s a spacer in there reducing travel from 120mm – 100mm.
I’ve searched the web & found lots of positive posts about going to 120mm but nothing about 140mm…

Sorry can’t help you there, mines a 2009.
I believe the 2011 has the overdrive headset, which can be swapped out obviously..

looks like ill need a straight steerer if i want the full 2 degrees, which is not really an issue as my tapered forks are only 100mm so need new ones anyway.

Anyone fancy swapping some 120 mm forks for my fox f100s?